


I Cannot Find The Words To Speak What You Mean To Me

by Velocity_Owl87



Category: North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell | UK TV
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Falling In Love, Fem!Thornton, Genderswap, Male!Margaret, Minor Canonical Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velocity_Owl87/pseuds/Velocity_Owl87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frederick Hale doesn't expect to like anything in Milton. It's miles away from Helstone and London and much too industrial for his tastes, the people too hard. He thinks he will be miserable, until Jocasta Thornton makes his acquaintance. An acquaintance that ends up with clashes and both of them losing their hearts to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Cannot Find The Words To Speak What You Mean To Me

**Author's Note:**

> This was a challenge to myself, borne out of a throwaway comment that I made regarding gender roles in fanfiction and also because North and South was brought up. So this story was born. I hope that I did it justice, since I loved both the book and the series and that is why I'm writing this as well as to have the story progress, but with the roles reversed.
> 
> Names-Frederick Hale and Margaret Hale switch roles in this story, and it's not mutiny, but an elopement that keeps Margaret Hale in Spain. Jocasta=John. I played around with other feminine versions of John, but they didn't fit as well as Jocasta, which fits the character in my opinion. In this version, there aren't too many deaths, or they happen off-screen and certain situations are changed for the story to flow better. It was a major juggling act, that's for certain. 
> 
> Sorry for the long notes and again, I have edited this as well as possible and if there are mistakes, my apologies.

_One_

He didn't expect anyone to be at the house when he and his father get home and it is with no small amount of shock that he receives Miss Thornton in the non-descript parlour. Despite Dixon giving him time to compose himself with her announcement of a visitor, he is still discomfited at finding the young woman in what will be their sitting room. He can't put it into words, but he feels it deeply at the core of his being when she stands up and their eyes meet for the first time.

He only has a short amount of time to study her while she is a portrait of stillness. He notes the black hair coiled in thick braids at the back of her head the ivory of her skin and those deep jewel eyes that seem to look into and through him. Although she's not a tall woman, she's got a presence about her. There's something about her berry-pink, curved lips and the line of her shoulders that tells him she's nothing like his cousin Edith. She's got the strength and resilience and the starkness of her home with her.

He takes all of this in several moments before she breaks the illusion of stillness and moves towards him to introduce herself. She doesn't curtsey or bow to him. She extends her hand toward him and he nervously bows, instead of taking it as he was clearly meant to.

She doesn't call him on it. She frowns only briefly before she retracts her hand and instead speaks. A voice like smokey honey informs him she is Miss Jocasta Thornton and that she is visiting on her father's behalf. She hands him a note from her father, careful to deposit it in his hand without touching it before she bobs down in a bow (mocking him, he suspects, but he can't be sure since he cannot see her face when she lowers her head to finish the action) making her royal blue skirts fan out on the worn floorboards. The sight is welcome to him and he memorizes how she looks like, without knowing why exactly. Only that he wants to recall the splash of colour in such a dull and faded place.

He does see her out and there's a flicker of something in those startling eyes, but it disappears as quickly as it appears and Frederick is left wondering if it was a trick of the light. He dismisses the thought when she steps into the coach and rides off.

_Two_

She can't help but to watch him and listen to him speak with her father and Francis. Frederick has made her an imbecile, despite the fact that he's a Southerner and too proud of it. She can see it in how he looks around and takes everything in Milton in. He's unused to their customs and critical of how everything in Milton is run. He doesn't understand and she wants to dismiss him as soft and ignorant. She despises him strongly because of how Francis wants to be like that.

Yet, she's strangely fascinated with him. He's not an ugly man. He's well-built in that aristocratic way of long, thin lines and angles. His skin is delicately pale and his eyes are large and dark in his handsome, slightly melancholic face. The darkness of his hair adds to his overall handsomeness and she can't help but to like him, yet feel anger that she is captivated by him in such a degree.

She tries to tell herself that it is simply because he is new, but that isn't the case and she is fully aware that she is simply trying to deny and dissuade her feelings toward him. She can admit that much, since he took her aback the first time she saw him in the dingy house her father had sent her to. She still remembers how stunned she was at seeing him in that parlour. His presence made it all more shabby and he stood out as if he had been carved in relief from his background. She had felt only a slight faintness and had ruthlessly suppressed it before greeting him by extending her hand to him.

A hand that he didn't take and made her heart harden against him due to her perceiving as too proud to do so. She wants to hate him. Wants to put him out of her mind and simply regard him as he brother's and father's tutor. But she cannot. He has, for better or worse, captured her attention in a way that no other person outside of her family circle ever had before.

She is all too aware of it, despite promising herself that she will not give into her emotions and pine for a man that thinks he is better than her.

She promises herself that. Yet when he looks at her again, her resolve fails her.

She always finds herself yearning for him and interacting with him. His conversations stimulate her and keep her from feeling she is living an empty existence and is headed for an even emptier one once she can't raise objections to the question of matches that her brother and father bring up.

She is also honest enough to admit that if Frederick Hale would look at her with intentions, she wouldn't turn him down.

But he doesn't.

_Three_

Frederick misses his sister and is worried about his mother, who is seriously ailing. He's not thinking of anything else and doesn't want to be away from her. He doesn't want to leave her and go to the dinner party that the elder Mr. Thornton has personally invited him and his father too. But his mother is adamant that he go, caught up in the excitement and a chance to live vicariously through him. So he dresses in the clothes that his aunt and his cousin had bought him what feels like years ago and he goes. Frederick is a silent shadow to accompany his animated father, who is genuinely pleased to be invited, since he finds much to discuss when he is with the Thorntons. He even likes to talk to Miss Thornton and has actually started to include her in his lessons.

All of this he learns on the way over and it is background knowledge that only barely pierces the gloom that has settled upon him after the last visit of the doctor that the Thornton's have referred to their family. He wishes, at this moment, to have Margaret or Edith with him. Or to be back at Helstone in the comfortable existence that had his mother in better health, his sister still at home and not in Spain and his father still in his vicarage.

He is so occupied with his thoughts that he almost misses Miss Thornton and her greeting. He almost doesn't notice the smallness of her hand in his and how it trembles in his grip. He does notice her eyes upon him, but he can't fathom why, since she's not given any hint of any feeling toward him. They have spoken, but she has such diverging views from hers that he had decided to not pursue any more discourse. He thinks that she dislikes him strongly, but the expression on her face makes him wonder if that is the case. He also thinks she's uncompromising and heavily influenced by her father's and brother's roles in the mills and possibly cannot or will not see how the manufacturing business needs to be amended. He wants to avoid the topic when they speak, but their interactions always come back to that and Frederick isn't really sure whether he wants them to stop.

He has found that as his father gets the same stimulation from talking to the male Thorntons, he is getting the same thing from his dialogues with Jocasta. He wishes, despite their short interaction, he could understand her feelings towards him. They seem obvious, but there are times when she looks at him and when he looks at her that there are different emotions at work rather than dislike.

He doesn't find out much more, since once they get home, his mother takes a turn for the worse and asks for his sister. He is so caught up in the events that he has no time to spare to even think about Jocasta Thornton.

And then the strike happens.

She was brave, he had to give her that. But he also couldn't understand why she had to fly out of the house and stand beside her father and him. Granted, he admired how much it took for her to rush out once she had seen him leaving the house right after her father. He didn't think another woman would have done that. They would have stayed inside and hoped for the best.

Not Jocasta Thornton.

She had stepped outside and stood right beside him, her warmth seeping through his arm and making him feel as if he was burned. Her presence there heightened the situation, strengthened the noise and forced him to realize that he may have to fight to get through the throng of workers clamouring at the proverbial gate. Her father is aware that he will have to do it and doesn't really notice that it is his daughter there and not his son.

He realized with stark clarity that he is the one that will have to protect her if anything happens. He prays that nothing does and pulls her closer. She looks at him, shock written plainly on her face and he can already see her open her mouth to protest.

He is ready for her to do so, but instead her head jerks to the side, blood flows from her temple and she crumples in his arms in a dead faint. He catches her and takes her back inside, leaving her father to deal with the now stunned crowd.

He knows as he barks out instructions and wipes the blood from her forehead, pressing his handkerchief to her forehead that they are inextricably tied together. Her bravery stunned him, despite understanding her desire to protect her father despite the futility of her gesture.

He stays with her until the Senior Thornton returns and grips his arm in a wordless gesture of relief and thanks. Their eyes meet and Frederick is nearly crushed by the pain he sees in his eyes. Eyes that are usually hard and flinty, but now are fractured with sorrow and concern for his daughter.

They don't speak as Frederick takes his leave and go home to another trying night.

Or so he thinks when Dixon pulls him in and ushers him to her room and give him his second shock of the day.

Margaret is standing there in the darkness of the room, her presence lighting it and his heart as well.

_Four_

Frederick doesn't think of Jocasta much at all. Nor does she ask about her.

His mind is too full of his grief over his mother and the anxiety mixed with joy over having his sister near him once again. She, who had always taken care of him like a second mother, but had to leave England under a cloud of shame after she had met Jose Maria Barbour and had subsequently settled in Cadiz under a cloud after leaving the Church and marrying a Papist. He understood she had done it to save the family shame of her disgrace, but they had missed her all the same.

Frederick couldn't bring himself to grieve for his mother and the sister that would leave him all too soon and for the rest of their lives. She has a life in Spain. Her husband and her children are there. It would be selfish to ask her to stay any longer than she had. Frederick doesn't begrudge her that.

They have to make arrangements for her to leave as quickly as possible. If anyone in Milton were to find out their connection, he is sure that no one would hire them as tutors any longer. Even with Mr. Bell's recommendations, having a daughter eloping with a Papist and bearing a child three months after would be enough to ruin their reputation.

He hates that he has to hide his sister like that. He doesn't care and would parade her around the town gladly. Introduce her to the Thorntons and have her speak to Jocasta...but she is the one that stands firm and she is his older sister. His father, bereft as he was agrees and Frederick complies.

He walks her to the station and while there, he tells her of Jocasta.

He's furious with himself when he does. He almost feels like he's sharing a secret he shouldn't even be daring to speak out loud and leans even closer as he spills out all of the emotions Jocasta's actions brought forth in him. He's speaks and speaks until he's out of breath and Margaret listens.

She has no advice to give. There's no time. All she does is kiss his cheek and wishes him the best with Jocasta. He's left standing on the platform and wondering why his sister wished him luck.

He doesn't think of it and summons a cab home, completely missing the sight of Francis Thornton watching him from across the shadowed street.

He and his father see less of the Thorntons afterward, and Mr. Hale wonders if they may have seen Margaret and gotten the wrong idea about her. She has lost the family resemblance after years in Spain and it could very well look like Frederick was escorting a hidden paramour to the train station.

Of Jocasta, Frederick only catches a few glimpses of her cold, deadly pale face. Her eyes are dim and he knows that something hurt her deeply enough to withdraw, but not to give up. She is living, but she's not the same woman he had the pleasure to meet.

He wants to reach out, but his father needs him and he cannot speak to her unless he is certain of his feelings for her. Feelings that are starting to torment him enough for him to seek wisdom in prayer and in sitting by his father in silence. He thinks of her more often, but cannot find ways to see her.

And so their lives continue, the greyness broken by a timely visit of Mr. Bell, a visit that ended up shattering Frederick's life again and sending him directly to London in a futile attempt to escape Milton and all his losses.

He doesn't count on not being able to stop thinking about Jocasta Thornton. Even though Miss Lennox is again making herself available. Even though he is still wading through the legal complexities of Mr. Bell's suddenly bequeathed legacy, Milton and Jocasta Thornton haunt him even more than before.

He hears of the abrupt changes of fortune of the Thornton's and it all clicks into place for him in Mr. Lennox's office.

_Five_

Jocasta watches the streets of London going by, but she doesn't take the sights in. Her brother tries to make her be interested in them by pointing out interesting sights, but she doesn't acknowledge him. She doesn't want to be in London, accompanying him on this bitter errand. Francis, she knows, is doing what he thinks is for the best. But it still doesn't ease the sting of seeing what he and her father worked so hard to build be brought down to ruins. They both will have to find work and she is to be married. Already, Francis and her father had found a suitor for her and were waiting for him to propose to Jocasta in the proper time and manner. He is willing, he is waiting for the dowry to arrive.

He was twenty years older than her, but he had weathered their recent misfortunes well and was interested in her. Jocasta has no idea why that would be the case, but at this point in time, she has no choice. She, out of all of them, know what kind of a burden she is to the family fortunes at the moment. Despite having a decent dowry arranged for her and one she would have liked to see put to use rather than being wasted on frivolous things.

But her father and her brother wouldn't hear of it when she had mentioned it and she still feels the indignity of being forced into a marriage with someone that she does not love. She understands the logic behind it and commends them for thinking of providing for her future. She isn't to be a governess and constantly worry about employment and security.

She is to be a wife and she doesn't mind being married.

What she minds is that it isn't Frederick Hale that she is to be married to.

Her hands clench in her lap at the remembrance of the man that had more or less disappeared from her life after the strike. She had only seen him briefly at his mother's funeral and had hoped, despite her better judgement, that something other than arguments could have happened between them. He had taken care of her after being injured, she had been told by her father.

Frederick had carried her in and stayed with her and that had been cause enough to give her something to hope for. A hope that was then dashed when Francis brought the news home of Frederick accompanying a strange woman to the train station. A woman that he seemed intimate enough to allow a lover's caress before she boarded the train.

That broke her hopes and her heart and she is still learning to live with the sorrow. She knows she isn't to be the first woman nor the last that loved someone who didn't love her back. She isn't the first to descend into poverty, nor will she be first to marry out of necessity. She knows she isn't special and that's why she ruthlessly quashes down her feelings and wants to hate him for having awakened those feelings in her and not being able to reciprocate them.

Her hands clench again in her lap and she forces herself to look at her brother and smile faintly at him. He smiles back and goes back to talking about London and the sights she will see once she is married.

She smiles again, humoring him, but says nothing and is saved from saying anything by carriage lurching to a stop.

They have arrived at Mr. Lennox's office and Francis helps her out of the carriage, despite knowing that she can do it very well by herself. He's insisted on always being proper, so she has no choice but to let herself be handled like a fragile, simpering fool.

She brushes off her deep blue skirts and perfunctorily follows him into the offices, expecting to be bored stiff at not being allowed to say anything while the transactions are going on.

What she doesn't expect is for Frederick Hale to be standing there with Mr. Lennox, who has a different set of paperwork drawn up than what her brother had come in to negotiate for.

Nor does she expect for him to walk toward her with his eyes alight as he clasps her cold hands in his.

“Jocasta?”

Her eyes widen and she drops her gloves onto the floor. He's never used her name and she can't help but to tremble at the slow, surprised way that it sounds as he is saying it. As if it is a miracle that she is standing in front of him rather than being miles away in Milton.

She wets her lips to reply, but the moment is broken all too soon.

Despite business being on the line, Francis is separating them. In the confusion, she recalls that Frederick has been promised to another. She remembers and it is her stillness that leads Frederick to clasp her again and explain.

“It was my sister, Margaret. She arrived for my mother's funeral and she was the one I was speaking to about you. Jocasta...There is no one else.”

His throat is working nervously as he looks deep into her eyes and she is transfixed by him. She knows, then, that he is telling her the truth.

“There is only you.”

Her breath catches in her throat at his words and she blinks rapidly to stop the tears from slipping down her cheeks, but they do despite her best efforts.

“As only you have been for me.”

END

 


End file.
